Robbie Lawler fighting for a UFC title in the year 2014? Sounds crazy, but OK

For us media types, Robbie Lawler has always been a tough guy to read. Or maybe that’s not true. Maybe he’s a really easy guy to read, but he feels more or less the same about everything, which is to say he’s mostly indifferent but somehow also a little bit angry.

This is the guy who, when told he’d be fighting for the welterweight title at UFC 171, reportedly responded, “Cool.” For Lawler, that’s the equivalent of squealing with pure delight.

I remember him at the post-fight press conference following an IFL event in Atlanta back in 2007. He’d been brought in to fight Eduardo Pamplona in the evening’s “superfight,” which in IFL parlance meant pretty much any fight that had nothing to do with the larger team contests that the organization was built around.

Lawler and Pamplona went at it for nearly three full rounds, the first two of which were spent mostly in the clinch. Whenever Lawler got a chance to step back and fire you could feel it at ringside, this sort of thumping sensation that seemed to travel through the floor. In the third Lawler caught Pamplona with a couple left hooks that wobbled him, followed by an uppercut that put him down. Up close it sounded like someone was smashing watermelons with a baseball bat.

When the ref pulled him off, Lawler walked to his corner and exchanged a high five with Pat Miletich. That was basically it, as far as the post-fight celebration went.

I was working for the IFL at the time, and this obligated me to ask most of the questions at the post-fight presser since most of the media gathered there usually didn’t know or care enough about the IFL to come up with much. Lawler had tried to schedule some other fight within a week or two of this one, so I asked him what his thought process was there. It seemed like as good a topic of conversation as any.

His thinking, Lawler replied, was that he should try and make as much money as possible by taking as many fights as possible.

Right, I said. Got it. But did he book them that close together thinking that one of them would be quick and easy? Because a week or two doesn’t seem like much time for recovery or preparation.

His thinking, Lawler repeated, was that he should try and make as much money as possible by taking as many fights as possible.

I took the hint.

About a month later he brutalized Frank Trigg at an Icon Sport event in Hawaii. I remember showing the video to my IFL co-workers, most of whom were not big MMA fans, just so they could see why I’d been so excited when this guy fought for us.

Oh, they said, surprised at the suddenness of it when the same short hooks he’d used on Pamplona dropped Trigg to his knees in the corner. Ohhhhhh, they said a second later, when Lawler hit him with one more right hand that popped his slack head back. They sounded like people who’d just watched a cat fall into a cement mixer.

That was a good year for Lawler. After the Trigg fight he beat “Ninja” Rua and finished 2007 a perfect 3-0, the first time he’d won three fights in a year since 2002. But if you told me back then that he’d still be fighting in 2014 … in the UFC … for the UFC welterweight title, well, skeptical isn’t a strong enough word, but it’ll do.

Maybe that’s why this career renaissance seems so satisfying, because of how unexpected it is. We hear all the time about guys like Lawler, guys who have the physical tools but, for whatever reason, haven’t quite put it all together. Usually they never do. Usually they are always just about to, always on the verge of getting serious. Then the sport passes them by and all they can do is trail along behind it like a man running after a bus that slows down just enough to keep him running, but not enough to ever let him on.

Lawler might have been one of those guys. Things seemed to be headed that direction. He was 19 years old when Dana White saw him fight at an event in Hawaii called “Shogun.” It was an event put together and promoted in part by Sean Shelby, who would go on to become one of the UFC’s matchmakers. When White signed Lawler to the UFC after that, despite the fact that he only had four pro fights at the time, Shelby said the UFC president explained it to people as, “a Christmas present to myself.”

Looking back, it might have been too much, too soon for Lawler. Or it might have been one of those things that has to happen, if only so that other, better things can happen much later.

Regardless of whether he beats Johny Hendricks to become the UFC’s first welterweight champ in the post-GSP era, this is that time for Lawler. This is the other, better time, the point where he actually is the fighter that all those around him kept saying for years that he could be. There’s a victory in that.

Most never get there. Most also never make it into a UFC title fight, but Lawler has. And in 2014, no less. Who’d have thought? Well, Lawler maybe. But you probably wouldn’t ever know it, since it’s not like he’s going to tell you.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

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